Guild Wars 2

A common suggestion I’m seeing a lot in the feedback for the Revenant are that on the whole the energy costs for the skills are too high – and of those that do feel this way, the most common suggestion is to trim down the cost of the F2/F3/F4 “Citadel Order” skills that come with the class. I’ve also seen the F2 “Heroic Command” skill criticised as underperforming (for which I have a theory – see second post here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Needed-Renegade-changes-buffs/) and some complaints regarding the reliability of the F3 “Citadel Bombardment” skill.

Independent of these specific balance criticisms, I’d like to criticise these three skills and the Kalla’s Fervour buff at a core design level. Kalla’s Fervour is easily generated, and once you hit the cap in battle you don’t need to manage or manipulate it (part of the reason why the F2 skill is weak – you don’t need to refresh in battle). It feels like a vestigial part of the class, something you forget about whilst playing and only remember during buildcraft. To me it should be a class-defining mechanic, and should (like many other class-defining mechanics for core and elite classes) be at the heart of the class mechanic skills – i.e. the Citadel Orders. As such I’d like to propose a rework to the Kalla’s Fervour buff, the Citadel Orders and the associated traits which would address some of these concerns and some other concerns fellow forumgoers have had about the class in a way that should hopefully require as little reworking as possible.

The basic idea would be to remove all energy costs from Citadel Orders and instead have them consume Kalla’s Fervour, with Heroic Command being reworked as a stability skill.

That would actually be a legitimate change. I love it.

Make consuming Kalla’s Fervour apply a stack/ two stacks of might and we have a solid mechanic.

I’ll also touch on the visuals – I’d like Fervour to be displayed either above the F1-F4 (like on Mesmer’s clone counter) or as points above the Endurance bar (like Deadeye’s Malice)..

The details of a possible implementation for this idea are as follows:

General

• Citadel Orders no longer cost energy to use.
• Citadel Orders consume any stacks of Kalla’s Fervour you had active at the time of use and apply 1 second of “Fatigue” (a new effect) for each stack consumed.
• Fatigue blocks you from generating new stacks of Kalla’s Fervour whilst it is active.

Skills

• F2 Heroic Command: skill now grants you and nearby allies immunity to control effects for 1 second per stack consumed. This isn’t stability – you can’t increase duration via boon duration buffs, it cannot be corrupted and blocking a control effect does not consume stacks of a boon. Increased cooldown e.g. 20 seconds.
• F3 Citadel Bombardment: Projectile radius increases per stack consumed. Damage from all projectiles includes the bonus from the consumed Kalla’s Fervour stacks. Increased cooldown e.g. 40 seconds.
• F4 Orders from Above: Pulses once for each stack consumed. Larger radius from trait now made baseline. Increased cooldown e.g. 30 seconds.

Traits:

• Vindication: might buff unchanged. Citadel Bombardment effect removed. Citadel Orders now break stun.
• Lasting Legacy: Kalla’s Fervour buff unchanged. Citadel Bombardment pulls more missiles into Tyria (flat +5 bonus instead of 1 per stack) over a larger area.
• Rightous Rebel: While you have Fatigue, receive reduced incoming damage from conditions. Orders from Above effect removed. Using a Citadel Order now grants might to nearby allies for each stack of Fervour removed.

….if only…….. (sigh)

Professor Sprout.1560:

The details of a possible implementation for this idea are as follows:

General

• Citadel Orders no longer cost energy to use.
• Citadel Orders consume any stacks of Kalla’s Fervour you had active at the time of use and apply 1 second of “Fatigue” (a new effect) for each stack consumed.
• Fatigue blocks you from generating new stacks of Kalla’s Fervour whilst it is active.

Skills

• F2 Heroic Command: skill now grants you and nearby allies immunity to control effects for 1 second per stack consumed. This isn’t stability – you can’t increase duration via boon duration buffs, it cannot be corrupted and blocking a control effect does not consume stacks of a boon. Increased cooldown e.g. 20 seconds.
• F3 Citadel Bombardment: Projectile radius increases per stack consumed. Damage from all projectiles includes the bonus from the consumed Kalla’s Fervour stacks. Increased cooldown e.g. 40 seconds.
• F4 Orders from Above: Pulses once for each stack consumed. Larger radius from trait now made baseline. Increased cooldown e.g. 30 seconds.

Traits:

• Vindication: might buff unchanged. Citadel Bombardment effect removed. Citadel Orders now break stun.
• Lasting Legacy: Kalla’s Fervour buff unchanged. Citadel Bombardment pulls more missiles into Tyria (flat +5 bonus instead of 1 per stack) over a larger area.
• Rightous Rebel: While you have Fatigue, receive reduced incoming damage from conditions. Orders from Above effect removed. Using a Citadel Order now grants might to nearby allies for each stack of Fervour removed.

I like it, however there’s one minus to the idea – the main appeal of the specialization and the traitline is the damage bonus. Removing it sounds cool, since it’s a trade-off, but I think ultimately it could cause the mechanic not to be used, specifically in PvE.

So here’s an alternative – Keep the Kalla’s Fervour damage buff as it is, gained every time you get Kalla’s Fervour. This splits the damage buff from the mechanic, allowing it to persist and not limiting F2-F4 usage.

Kalla’s Fervour is now a second mini-resource, above the endurance bar, visually similar to Deadeye’s Malice. Fervour behaves similar to Adrenaline, decaying out of combat, caps at 5 and serves as a resource for F2-F4 Renegade skills. Lasting Legacy trait now simply doubles the damage bonus, rather than increasing max stacks to 10.
Alternatively, cap Fervour at 10, but reduce the base bonus to 1%/15 Ferocity per stack.

No. Keep the energy cost as is but get rid of the cooldowns.

Let us decide if / when to use them. Not some cooldown.

No way. Revenant already has cooldowns and energy to manage. You want to give renegade another resource pool? Sure kallas fervour is easy to build up but that can change at any balance patch and we’ll just be back at square 1 crying about cooldowns, energy, and now kallas fervour. Not to mention the out of combat openings you destroy. Your group are buffing up, how about a little alacrity before the zergs collide? Wait, I have to attack some random wolf mob to build up fervour. Want to open with citadel bombardment? Tough luck.

Having to hunt target for random critters to phase traversal is annoying. You can never find them when you need them but they’ll be sure to be there when you hit sword 2. Now we have to randomly attack mobs before a big push? This solution sounds good at first but it’s just creating another problem. Lower the energy costs… across the board.

@Set You make a good point about out of combat. To some extent this is a situation that the class already has, especially with traited Citadel Bombardment – you lose 5 missiles and a hefty chunk of damage if you don’t have Kalla’s Fervour active when you engage. One option (with or without the changes suggested above) would be to have the buff refresh up when out of combat, either globally or just in PvP/WvW. Another option would be to just balance the class around the idea that the citadel orders won’t be available when engaging and ensure that the other potential engages from Kalla and shortbow are viable and the orders are worth waiting a few seconds for. I’d prefer this second option. As for any future balance patches that might nerf Kalla’s Fervour buildup I think that’s too hypothetical to discuss.

@Caeledh that’s certainly a respectable position to hold. The problem is that these citadel orders are really energy-intensive, so it’s hard to spare the energy to use their on-the-top benefits whilst also doing whatever you’ve switched to your current legend to do. Currently speaking they are basically half a legend that you have on your skillbar at all times, presenting a much higher energy demand than the Herald’s F2 facet ever did.

Certainly (and this is relevant to your comments @Set as well) the balance team could free up some energy by reducing energy costs on other skills across the board, but that’s a delicate balancing act: because these skills draw from the energy pools of core legends and compete with core utilities and core weapon skills any energy cost reductions anywhere are going to have wide-reaching implications. I could not expect such a careful rework to be done effectively for months after release if at all.
By contrast if you isolate the citadel order skills into using a separate cost mechanic then balancing for them becomes a lot simpler, something that could potentially be done before PoF launches.

@Rym thanks for the vote of confidence ::D As for your concerns regarding the loss of buff uptime it’s certainly a tradeoff so you wouldn’t necessarily want to use these skills in the middle of a DPS rotation. However in PvE even a DPS build does not spend every second applying damage so I know that there are a number of situations in PvE where one could spare 5 seconds of no buff for a useful effect, e.g.:

• When casting a Renegade skill or two, most of which have long cast times.
• When dealing with a boss mechanic (moving into position, during phasing when the target cannot be attacked or other similar cases).
• When reviving an ally.
• When disabled by a control effect.

After all, these are situations when Kalla’s buff would tick down anyway since you won’t be attacking and applying it. The more players learn the PvE content the more I think they will find situations where they know that they can safely switch the buff off.

Maybe F skill should be upkeep ones?

No, that’s a terrible idea. And whoever came up with fatigue that’s even worse.

They are just fine as they are, they just need reduced costs. Order’s from above gives us an option for support builds, Citadel bombardment will be good damage in pve, but the cost is just god kitten insane. Might per stack is fine, even at 20 energy, but I wouldn’t mind it go down to 15.

Professor spout, changes to core functions can and have occurred. Take for example naturalistic resonance being nerfed from 50 % boon duration to 33% and alacrity from 66% to 33%. Those example sets precedent and it’s not unlikely they will adjust how it works with any further change.

Herald’s f2 was only used as upkeep in pve afaik. In pvp/wvw, it was double tapped for boon and dmg bonus. In essence it was almost free boon and it barely affects your energy bar. Using kallas F abilities punishes you heavily. Honestly I’d like a huge decrease in energy. Ideally, all of them reduce by half.